On Tuesday, July 8, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, along with the LA County Board of Supervisors, plus the cities of Santa Monica, Pico Rivera, Pasadena, Montebello, West Hollywood, Culver city, and Monterey Park— with likely more still to come—announced that she and the other mayors were joining a federal civil rights lawsuit, which seeks to end the Trump administration’s ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that, as one of the mayors put it, “has been terrorizing” Southern California residents.
“It’s been two months since Angelenos woke up to a completely frightening reality on our city streets,” said Los Angeles City Attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto who, along with Bass, led much of the discussion at Tuesday’s press conference.
“Now we have Military troops on our city streets. This cannot become routine, sending militarized troops without due suspicion, without probable cause to round people up and take them away,” Feldstein Soto told reporters.
“Once upon a time we had checks and balances, but now we just have one branch of government.
“This cannot become routine, sending militarized troops without due suspicion, without probable cause to round people up and take them away. We’re a city of immigrants. Immigrants are our family members.
“This is our trumpet call to action.”
Each mayor who spoke had their own list of horrors they had witnessed, and/or had been described to them by family members of those who had been taken away.
One mayor described three men sitting at a bus stop waiting for a bus that would take them closer to where they’d been hired to work in Altadena where the Eaton fire burned so many homes. But, before the men could board the needed bus they were “picked up by masked men,” one of whom reportedly pulled a gun out and aimed the gun at a resident who was watching the arrival of the masked men.
Another mayor told those gathered about a woman who was headed to her job, which reportedly consisted of caring for terminally ill seniors, when she was grabbed, never mind that her children are citizens, said the mayor who had knowledge of situation..
Masked Goons & Big Lies
The original lawsuit that Mayor Bass and the other mayors (plus LA County), announced they have joined—the 65-page text of which you can find here—describes how the Trump administration has been abducting and disappearing community members using unlawful stop and arrest practices, going into immigrants’ work places, and confining many of those grabbed at a federal building in illegal conditions while denying them access to attorneys, and common due process.
The lawsuit was originally brought by five individual workers, plus such organizations as The Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers (UFW), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
It alleges that the nation’s Department of Homeland Security has unconstitutionally arrested and detained people in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration.
“Since June 6th, marauding, masked goons have descended upon Los Angeles, terrorizing our brown communities and tearing up the Constitution in the process,” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, who is representing the filing’s plaintiffs.
“No matter their status or the color of their skin, everyone is guaranteed Constitutional rights to protect them from illegal stops. We will hold DHS accountable.”
Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel, who is also representing the plaintiffs, put it his own way, when he described how “members of the Southern California community have been whisked away and disappeared into a grossly overcrowded dungeon-like facility lacking food, medical care, basic hygiene, and beds.
“The objective of this draconian crackdown is to eviscerate basic rights to due process,” said Rosenbaum, “and to shield from public view the horrifying ways ICE and Border Patrol agents treat citizens and residents who have been stigmatized by our government as violent criminals based on skin color alone. This lawsuit is in part about putting an end to that big lie.”
Mass abductions
In the meantime, Angelica Salas, executive director at CHIRLA, describes how federal agents “have been abducting individuals en masse and taking them to the basement of a federal building in downtown L.A. commonly referred to as ‘B-18,’ which lacks beds, showers, or medical facilities.”
(CHIRLA, which was founded in 1986 to advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees, is now one of the largest and most effective advocates for immigrant rights.”
The facility, said Salas, is reportedly designed to hold a small number of people temporarily so they can be processed and released, or processed and transported to a long-term detention facility.
“We have heard from over 100 families of individuals taken to B-18 and other detention centers who attest to their loved ones being kept in inhumane conditions,” which often consist of small windowless rooms with dozens of other detainees, “where they are being verbally humiliated and pressured into signing papers they don’t understand.” according to Salas.
“Angelenos held in those conditions are routinely deprived of food, water, clean clothing, baths, and access to information and counsel which can have dire consequences on their chances to get reunited with their families.”
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More as the story continues to evolve.
Mayor Karen finds herself in the exact same position as the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace did 65 years ago. Both standing in front of the Feds and saying get out. No doubt Mayor Karen, along with Celeste, view the federal governments use of the military to force integration as just about the best thing ever. And now that it’s be used for something they don’t like, it’s the worst thing ever. Guess there’s a principal in there somewhere, not that they are in any danger of learning it.
As the saying goes, “first as tragedy then as farce”. We’re going through the farce bit now